Every time I take a shower I email Al Gore, I say: hey Gore, do the right thing, I improved the atmosphere around here, give me a medal... Give me two medals and I'll stop eating peanut butter, that really messes up the atmosphere around here..
With all respect I reckon I am better equipped to deal with the different disciplines involved than any other swinging dick in this forum. Thermodynamics, gas stoichiometry, meteorology, absorption spectra and the rest. I discovered ionospheric scintillation along the geomagnetic equator when the world science community swore it only occurred at the poles. I believe something when I can confirm it myself. Now you've made me beep my horn and annoyed me. I realize you know a thing or two about energy but don't tell me about "scientific opinion" you've dug up on the internet. Given the sheer mass of the atmosphere and the incredible heat capacity of the oceans the total volumetric output of man's combustive processes for the last 100,000 years isn't enough to move temperature means a single tick in either direction. We and our lives are simply not that significant. Everyone here is entitled to their interpretation of the data and those opinions you value excessively. I am not swayed, not even a little. I will live my life as I wish even if I must live in a developing country that is waived from cap and trade participation. I'll live in a little village in the golden triangle if I must and will participate in the burning of the rice fields each season without hesitation. AGW is a business conceived by hucksters and institutionalized by clueless liberals and fascists. They need the treatment Rome afforded to Christians. You're the only one that can get to me like this Ricter. The only one here. Please don't go back into that pattern.
Ricter, Let me say this- I love the environment, I don't want polar bears to go away and I am not for people being able to dump whatever they want to into the local rivers etc. What bothers me is how political the discussion is and how distorted the science gets. The communists have even stated that environmentalism is their new home since they cannot compete economically. There is then an enormous bias built in. Back to your bottle experiment for example. It is actually used by educators and people in gov't to push for the liberal version of the warming agenda. Gov't and educators should be pushing for critical thinking and real education, NOT something biased with an political agenda attached to it. Democracy cannot function when gov't institutions do this. So here is the science of why the bottle experiment has nothing to do with the greenhouse effect. First you need to understand that the greenhouse effect is a problem in radiative heat transfer, the earth predominantly can only receive and send energy via radiation into the vacuum of space. Glass is a greenhouse material, when you make a greenhouse it will allow in optical and near infrared radiation but it is opaque to far infrared. Most of the solar flux is in the optical and near infrared so the greenhouse allows in the most energtic part of the solar spectrum. When things absorb solar radiation they heat up, then they will re-emit or scatter radiation but at much longer wavelengths. If you can trap those longer wavelengths then you have trapped the radiative energy of the most energetic portion of the solar spectrum. The glass does that, (as well as being a very poor heat conductor, i.e. it is an insulator) therefore you have a greenhouse. That is also then the property of CO2 that is essential for it to be a greenhouse gas, not its heat capacity. The bottle experiment does not in any way measure CO2's long wavelength blocking ability, if anything it might only use the plastic bottle's long wavelength blocking ability. I look at possible 1-2C increase over the next hundred years and just shrug. If you believe peak oil theory, then we at most have 2 more industrial revolutions in us as far as hydrocarbon emissions. Therefore we might eventually double CO2 concentration from 1800 levels to .07%, but if I look at natural historical variation that is within bounds. I am not saying that it isn't possible for some undesireable effects, but the end of humanity? C'mon man. I'm open to reasonable discussion and action among people who don't hate capitalism. Surely there are many alternatives to look at other than something involving crippling the USA and sending money to Africans.
You may and probably have (Mav too) won the battles with me on this, but you still lose the war. My belief has not changed, in fact after doing some surfing as a result of this topic, it's firmer than before. To beat me, you don't have to convince me, you have to convince "Earth's Scientists" (ES). You're better equipped to do that, granted. Good luck. And I'm well aware of the weakness of ad populum, don't bother going there. Odds are, ES are right and you deniers are wrong. Hey, we're in a speculative business, there's nothing wrong with "odds are". Edit: Mav, reply coming. Meeting...
Actually, I did know about it, but hadn't heard that the cessation of that belt movement, thanks to melting ice, could result in more widespread cooling. My point still stands, if we're contributing to the melting of the ice, stop that.
Are you serious? Ricter has been arguing for global warming and didn't know about this major current until yesterday? How can anyone who has a position on AGW not know about at least this current?
We are contrasting conclusions based on data to conjecture. I have just shown you that Hawking does not mind making headlines with conjecture.
More specifically he didn't understand how melting ice could shut it down and cause cooling: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=3411641#post3411641